An air of resignation hung in the voices of Westchester workers Tuesday when I stopped in downtown White Plains to talk about the hole in their 2013 paychecks from increased deductions for Social Security.

You remember the New Year’s Eve drama in Washington, D.C., which led to the bipartisan agreement in which we were told taxes were raised only on the top 2 percent of American taxpayers?

What those spin doctors forgot to mention was that payroll taxes — they really do count as taxes — were rising for all American workers on income up to $113,700. That’s because federal lawmakers let expire the 2-percentage-point reduction in payroll taxes in force in 2011 and 2012, which provided a $115 billion tax break each year to jump-start the sluggish economy.

Several White Plains workers I spoke with merely shrugged and said they’d soldier on, hoping the Social Security system will still be intact when they hit retirement age.

“There was nothing we could do about it,” said Josu Omaechevarria, 48, of White Plains, a financial analyst at New York Power Authority. “Social Security taxes benefit everyone, and they say it will make Social Security solvent again. We’ll see.”

David Bernstein, 38, who works at White Plains Recreation and Parks Department, said his paycheck was lighter by $20 a week. Those at the top end of the scale saw their Social Security contribution rise $44 a week.

“I was expecting the tax would go back up,” Bernstein said. “Our nation is so far in debt. I hope this helps.”

Still almost three decades from Social Security eligibility for his generation at the age of 67, Bernstein remains cautiously optimistic that he’ll get what’s been promised in 2050.

“I better get Social Security,” he said. “I’ve been paying into it all my life.”

The end of the 2-percentage-point tax break comes as the Social Security system hunkers down to provide benefits for my baby boomer generation. It made sense to end the holiday. Over the past two years, the tax break was made up with contributions from the nation’s general fund to the Social Security Trust Fund, which means we borrowed to do it, and added to the burgeoning federal deficit.

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Experts say the system is in fairly good shape. The Social Security Board of Trustees in 2012 said the program was fully funded through 2032. And even if the trust funds are then exhausted, the reports notes that the program, through payroll taxes, has the wherewithal to pay 75 percent of promised benefits.

Nevertheless, there’s movement afoot in Washington to cut benefits for current Social Security recipients and to increase the age at which you can receive your full benefits for those in Bernstein’s generation, who have yet to reach age 55.

Raising the retirement age to 70, and cutting cost-of-living increases for current Social Security recipients are priorities of the Business Roundtable, an association of 203 CEOs whose roster includes three Westchester titans of industry: IBM’s Virginia Rometty in Armonk, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi in Purchase and ITT’s Denise Ramos in White Plains. (In the interest of full disclosure, Gracia Martore, the CEO of Gannett Co. Inc., which owns The Journal News, is also a Roundtable member.)

Their plan did not include taxing higher earners beyond the $113,700 cap.

Raising the Social Security age would effectively cut benefits for those who plan to retire in their 60s, or foresee a time at that age when their services no longer are wanted by their employers. Today, those born between 1943 and 1954 can start receiving Social Security benefits at age 62, but at a price. If you collect at 62, you’ll get about 75 percent of what you’d get at the retirement age of 66.

Unlike the rest of us, it’s doubtful that the high-powered CEOs will be worrying at what age they, or their children, are eligible for their full Social Security benefits. Reports show that Nooyi earned $17 million in compensation in 2011; Ramos made $7.8 million that year; and Rometty’s salary almost doubled at Big Blue in 2012 to $1.5 million.

The CEOs argue that the Social Security system’s long-term financial condition requires these reforms, which also include paying out smaller benefits to the wealthy — a sure-fire method of undercutting the broad-based support for Social Security, which would make subsequent benefit cuts more politically palatable if they were to fall predominantly on the poor and working poor.

The CEOs’ cut in the cost-of-living formula, called the Chained CPI, is based on the theory that when prices rise, the elderly change their buying strategy and replace higher-priced items with those that cost less.

Sherry Glied, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, says the new formula will have its biggest impact on an expanding group of seniors: the very old who are still kicking in their 90s and are increasingly impoverished.

Rodica Ceslov, 40, owner of Wild Frog Studio in White Plains, says the changes have her so concerned that’s she making an appointment with her accountant.

“There’s so much uncertainty,” she said. “I need to be planning more.”